UncleAimless Reviews

Sleepwalk (1986)

Pure delight

[8/10 · 21 August 2016]

I doubt Sara Driver's SLEEPWALK needs to go begging for favorable reviews, and I don't imagine many people who have seen, or who may be tempted to see, the film would bother looking up what the peanut gallery here at IMDb makes of it, but since there is currently only a single review here, and a negative one, I thought I should point out that SLEEPWALK is a beautiful, atmospheric film, in the rich minority tradition of the low-budget American cinema of uncanny mystery and poetry, imaginatively directed, gorgeously photographed, witty and clever, with immaculate performances by Suzanne Fletcher and the great Ann Magnuson. The big mystery surrounding the heroine's translation assignment never fully becomes clear, which I can imagine would be frustrating for some, but the film is not meant to work on a straight plot level, and viewers have to be willing to let go and just go with it, in a pure visual poetry way.

The Edgar Wallace Mystery Theatre: Candidate for Murder (1962) Season 2, Episode 9

rather good actually

[6/10 · 6 September 2010]

I must disagree with the previous commenter: this is not a bad film at all. The plot is constructed in such a way that it does keep you guessing about one thing or another for almost the entire running time, which I think is usually considered the key to the success of a movie like this. Whether the conclusion is plausible or not I don't know; I didn't mind it. The scriptwriter was Lukas Heller, and it's easy to see why he went on to have such a successful career: this movie is taut, suspenseful, and as I said it keeps you guessing. As for the cast: Michael Gough is great as always; Hans Borsody is also excellent as the killer; no one else is a real stand-out but no one lets the film down too badly either, though a better actress than Erika Remberg would have bumped the film up a notch.

According to several sources this is based on a Edgar Wallace story called "The Best Laid Plans of a Man in Love," which was published in Cosmopolitan magazine in 1927.